The following story was reported by The Utah Investigative Journalism Project in partnership with Utah Stories.

Since April 30, 2024, Salt Lake City has offered incentives to developers to provide much needed affordable housing in the city. The Affordable Housing Incentive offers a variety of perks to developers who add affordable units, like allowing them to build higher structures with fewer parking spots and receive expedited service in jumping through planning hoops. 

The Utah Investigative Journalism Project reviewed developer applications through February of 2025 and found only six developers have signed up to use the incentive. 

Five of the projects are small, planning to add only four units. Under the incentive, half of those units are required to be affordable. The definition of affordable in the city is 80% of area median income and in 2024 that would mean a family making no more than $92,400. 

The Folsom Apartments, however, is a much larger project that received the incentive to build taller than normally allowed for its project on the city’s west side. That project is providing 108 units affordable at 60% of the area median income. That deal, however, wasn’t made possible by the city’s incentive alone. It was awarded a low-income housing tax credit by the Utah Housing Corporation in September 2024 worth $600,000 three months before it applied for the city’s incentive. 

Experts, however, say it may be too soon to judge the incentive’s success.

Carrots and Sticks  

Salt Lake City worked for three years developing zoning plans to increase affordable housing in the capital. The incentive is just that. Under state law the city can’t use a stick, or inclusionary zoning, which forces developers to provide affordable options. So, instead, city planners are left to offer carrots.

“The state has preempted the city from inclusionary zoning ordinances, but this is one way around it, by offering voluntary programs where people can take advantage of it,” said Ruediger Matthes, a policy manager at Salt Lake City’s planning division.

“It hasn’t been like we opened a floodgate,” Matthes said of the new incentives. “More people have to get used to the idea of ‘how do we take advantage of this new tool.’ It isn’t like we increased building heights to 500 feet across the city, we’ve done something incentive based and context based and takes a little bit of prep work on the developer’s side to make sure things will actually work out.”

The process also involved developing more tools than just the affordable housing incentive.

“There are a variety of incentives offered, basically in all the city’s zoning districts,” said Sara Javoronok, a senior planner in the city’s planning division.

That includes the “Thriving in Place” ordinance to prevent gentrification in the city and require developers in some situations to help pay for moving expenses and other costs if their projects will force existing tenants out of their homes.

While the process is more involved, that’s also a result of the city spending a significant amount of time getting public feedback. Javoronok said for one example, public feedback helped guide another ordinance to encourage preservation of historic buildings that add affordable units.

Claudia Aiken is a researcher at the Housing Solutions Lab in New York University’s Furman Center and she said the voluntary carrot approach has worked well in places like San Diego. That city created voluntary incentives in 2016 that by 2020 had created more than 6,000 homes including 463 affordable homes in mixed-income projects.

Aiken said incentives like Salt Lake City’s are often bundled together so it’s hard to determine the value of “any particular carrot,” but said incentives to increase density have the most data backing up their effectiveness.

She also cautioned it can take time to evaluate the impact of incentives, especially when other factors might be at play; factors such as regulation or economic circumstances.

“I think we are learning that zoning is really important, but it’s not the only barrier to producing affordable housing right now,” Aiken said.

It’s a point echoed by Javoronok who has noted rising construction costs and challenging interest rates for developers.

“It’s hard to say what the outcomes of [the incentive] are at this point,” she said.

No Backyards in My Backyard 

For Andra Ghent, a professor of finance at the University of Utah, the key to more affordable housing is more about density than affordability. The problem, she said, is getting past the very “small handful of residents that complain pretty loudly” against having more density in their single family neighborhoods.

“I used to be on the Salt Lake City Planning Commission and I saw the same people, week after week, and I just don’t think they have it right,” Ghent said. 

“We are a majority renter city,” she added, but the city council seems to overemphasize complaints from residents in single family neighborhoods.

If single family homes could be converted to hold six units–without requiring any to be affordable–it would increase overall housing supply and that would protect affordable housing. 

She compares it to car prices a few years ago. There was a shortage of new cars so used car prices went through the roof. The same goes with housing.

“Higher-income households are more likely to occupy new housing supply and that puts less pressure on old housing stock,” she said.

But Ghent acknowledged that there is “no silver bullet” when it comes to affordable housing. But she said there are things the city could do–though they might be unpopular.

“Get rid of single family-zoning, eliminate parking requirements and minimum lot sizes–these are really low-hanging fruit that wouldn’t cost the city anything,” she said.

Interested in learning more about Salt Lake City’s affordable housing incentive? Check out their developer’s guide HERE.

If you support the work we do and believe in the power of a free and independent press, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to The Utah Investigative Journalism Project by visiting utahinvestigative.org/donate.